Nikon D3000

Buttons & Dials

There aren’t a whole lot of buttons on the D3000, which keeps it from looking intimidating, but also cuts down on the instant accessibility of certain key controls. There’s no direct access to ISO, white balance, drive mode or autofocus settings, for example, all of which we frequently adjust. Many cameras use the four-way controller for this purpose in addition to its menu-navigating functions, but Nikon chose not to take this practical route.

Instead, you have a quick menu on the LCD while shooting, brought up by pressing the button left button on the back of the camera. This is a shortcut, but it still requires cursoring around a menu to find the setting you’re seeking, which is much more time-consuming than just pressing a button labeled ‘ISO’ and making the change.

There’s one control dial placed conveniently for right-thumb access on the camera back. When shooting in full manual exposure mode, the dial changes shutter speed by default, and holding down the exposure compensation button while turning the dial changes the aperture setting.

There is a single programmable Fn button, which does offer a user-selected shortcut to some of the controls mentioned above. However, it’s been banished to the left side of the camera, along with the flash control button, where it’s inconvenient to push and easily forgotten altogether.

Picture Controls

The D3000 uses the same Nikon Picture Control system found on the company’s higher-end cameras, which makes it easy to transfer custom settings between models. Several parameters of the Picture Controls can be adjusted by the user, including Sharpening, Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, and Hue, among others. The changes to a Picture Control remain in effect until you change them again but, unlike other Nikon models, the results can’t be stored as new custom settings.

While it probably won’t be used frequently, we like the option to have the date and/or time imprinted on your photos. This could come in handy in a business environment, where photos are used not just for art but for recordkeeping, and seeing the date and time at a glance is helpful.

Six preset Picture Controls are built into the camera. The images below show the effects of each selection on the same scene; the Picture Control descriptions are Nikon’s own explanations.

Picture Effect Samples
Standard Neutral Vivid Monochrome Portrait Landscape More...

In-Camera Editing

Nikon offers an extraordinarily broad range of in-camera editing effects, which are particularly valuable for entry-level users who may be less inclined to fiddle with image editing software on the computer, and more inclined to output directly to an attached PictBridge printer or to order prints from a service bureau.

In-camera RAW processing is also available, Image size and quality, white balance, exposure compensation, Picture Control setting, color space and noise reduction can all be adjusted and a JPEG copy saved.

While shooting, you can store a comment of up to 36 characters in a photo’s EXIF data. This could be useful if you wanted to flag where an image was taken, for example, though the time-consuming text input procedure and inability to sort by comments makes this a marginally useful feature at best. And unfortunately, there’s no in-camera way to add or edit a comment for a photo that’s already stored on your memory card.

Menu

The D3000 offers both a standard Nikon menu system plus a quick access shooting menu that transforms the LCD information display into an interactive panel for changing key shooting settings. After pressing the zoom in button on the bottom left of the camera back, you can navigate to each of the settings listed along the right and bottom of the screen, press OK, and choose from a screen of settings options.

The main menu system follows the tried-and-true Nikon design, with its lefthand tabs for navigating from section to section and clear, easy readability. We’re not fans of having to scroll down several screens to see all the options in a given category, but at least the Nikon strategy lets you jump immediately from menu tab to menu tab, without having to scroll all the way back to the top of a page.

Instruction Manual

You can’t fault Nikon when it comes to providing every snippet of information needed to make the most of your D3000 camera purchase, even if we were briefly baffled by what to find where.

You get a one-page fold-out Quick Start Guide (in English and Spanish) that’s basically limited to camera setup (attaching the strap and lens, charging and inserting the battery, taking a picture in Auto mode) plus software installation, and using USB to copy photos and print.

There’s also a printed 68-page User’s Manual (again in both languages) to introduce users to the basics of the various camera modes and features. It’s a nicely prepared publication, including lots of clear diagrams and screen captures, instructions that are step-by-step enough for anyone to follow, and a good balance between full explanation and fear-inducing complexity. The only significant problem here: there’s no index, and even with a decent table of contents, there needs to be one.

Also in the box is a CD-ROM with a PDF version of the 216-page Reference Manual (in English, Spanish and French). This manual includes everything in the User’s Manual plus further details on advanced camera operations, again with a well-structured words-and-pictures approach (and yes, a complete index, which even manages to have the terms you’re actually likely to use when searching for information). For no apparent reason, this document is called the D3000 User’s Manual on the Nikon web site, where it’s available for download here.

But wait, there’s more, as the man in the informercial says. In addition to the printed learning materials, there’s a built-in Help system, accessed by pressing the question-mark button when ‘?’ is displayed at the bottom left of a menu or shooting screen. The screens that pop up via this help system are brief and to the point, not an entirely adequate substitute for an actual user manual but a good step toward defining the choices at hand.

Finally, we can’t find a thing in the D3000 box that points to a useful web-based learning system Nikon provides, which is a shame. The Digitutor site for the D3000 (which you can find here) basically provides a video-and-text walkthrough of all the camera’s functions and capabilities. It’s a painless way to get acquainted with all the camera features, almost like turning the camera manual into a lean-back-and-watch experience. And if the English language announcer seems to think he’s working for Nick Cohen instead of Nikon, that only makes it more fun.